Today’s guest blogger is A.E. Howard! She’s a writer and an artist, as you'll see if you visit her blog. She is sharing with us an interview with Reginald Long-Tail Jackson Weaver, Opossum Sorcerer, who is a character in her book Flight of Blue, released recently. We love the voice of this character, and wish Anna all kinds of success with her book. Take it away, Anna!
-------------------------- I sat down with Reginald the other day to get his view on the events in Flight of Blue, and also to fill in some of the blanks that I didn’t discover while writing the story. Some of the things happened so fast, I had to go back for details.
Reginald: Yes, terribly busy indeed. What is it that you were so desperate to know that you dragged me out here?
AEH: Ah, well, some of the folks who’ve been reading the story I wrote about you and the other, you know, Flight of Blue and they want to know more about you. One of the questions I hear a lot is: what makes you different from normal Opossums?
Reginald deadpans me.
Reginald: I take it they have not yet read the book, have they?
AH: Uh, well, it just came out like four days ago, so, no, most of them haven’t.
Reginald: So you have dragged me out here to ask silly questions that people could easily understand if they simply read that... that... amusing little tale of yours.
AEH: I’m sorry, “amusing little tale”?
Reginald: Yes, that story in which you felt it necessary to render with precise detail situations that you found amusing while skipping over salient information about the folk you were supposedly writing about.
AEH: This is about the “playing possum” thing isn’t it?
Reginald: That is utterly irrelevant.
AEH: Oh, admit it, you don’t like how that made you look.
Reginald: I will tell you as I told Kai, that little trick has been ensuring the survival of my people for millennia. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a little subterfuge to protect oneself when one is threatened.
AEH: True... but you’re “little trick” as you call it has become a sort of saying in the human world. It can mean anything from “feigning death” to “playing dumb” depending on how it is used.
Reginald: (bristling up his fur just a tad) How it is perceived in your world does not make it any less effective a strategy.
AEH: But it could be perceived...
Reginald: Oh, enough already. Perhaps the idea that the incident could be misconstrued, has, in fact, bothered me somewhat since you wrote the story. But what is done is done and cannot be undone. So let us move along with this inquisition you call an interview, shall we?
AEH: If you insist. Okay, so when we first meet you in the story, you’re naked by the side of the road, having been injured by a car. But later we see you dressed like the other Opossums, was there a reason you were running around nude?
Reginald: You have got to be joking. This is what you call an interview? I mean, other than the fact that you might be attempting to humiliate me with the reminder that I must masquerade as a common possum by running around in the buff when I am not with my folk, I can see no reason such a question is even relevant.
He’s glaring at me with those little round eyes at this point, and I’m beginning to wonder if messing with a powerful sorcerer is such a good idea. Even though he’s so cute when he’s grouchy. Oops. Don’t tell him I said that, okay? He really might curse me then.
AEH: Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just think it’s interesting.
Reginald: Of course you do, so a note on that little curiosity makes it into the story, and yet nothing about my family or lineage does. Now that is some interesting material.
AEH: Okay, then, Reginald. Tell us a little bit about your family... and, er... your lineage.
Reginald: Finally. A decent sort of question. Let us see. When you let me speak long enough in the story to introduce myself, you discovered that I am none other than Reginald Long-Tail Jackson Weaver, Sorcerer of the Third Order. And yet after that fascinating name and title, you asked no other questions, but rushed off, willy-nilly, into some discussion of how Kai and Ellie sneaked a stretcher out of the house to carry me in. I mean, really.
AEH: Er, Reginald? Your lineage?
Reginald: Ah yes, where was I? Let us see. It may interest you to know, although given your mundane tastes, perhaps not. But it should interest you to know that the First Order of Sorcerers died out seven generations ago. In our struggle to maintain our way of life, stranded here in the Middle Realm, our magic almost died out with the First Order as the Second Order, the magical line of Weavers, had no other magical line with which to procreate. But it was discovered by a fortunate accident as it were that there were traces of magical blood in the Jackson line, even though no full-blooded Jackson was a sorcerer. But my great-great-grandfather Archimedes Weaver (and his mother was a Long-Tail from the First Order), went against his parents wishes and married a girl from what all of them presumed to be a non-magical line, the Jacksons. And so it was that their descendants, and others from the two families that married as well, become sorcerers, not quite as powerful as their predecessors, but the magic lives on in us, the sorcerers of the Third Order.
AEH: Reginald, about their love story...
Reginald: I have not yet finished with explaining how Opossum folk take names. You see, I bear the surname of both my ancestors, as well as my great-great-grandfather’s mother, which indicates...
AEH: Reginald, I hate to cut you off.
Reginald: No, you do not. You are bored. Admit it.
AH: No, no, I’d love to learn how your surnames work, but right now, we need to stop, we’re taking up too much space as it is. Another time perhaps? The coffee’s on me...
Reginald: Humph.
AEH: Okay, then, thanks for your time!
I will confess to beating a hasty retreat at this point; he really looked unhappy with me. And, well, he has been known to curse things out of vengeance... I would hope after the traffic light incident, he’d have learned his lesson, but you never know...Purchase Flight of Blue: Paperback | Kindle
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